Summary
For many years, grammar was the center in the teaching of English as a foreign language, but with the appearance of the communicative approach during the 70s, this conception changed radically, giving priority to communicative competence as an end to achieve, that is, we calls for the need for a personalized approach, in correspondence with the profile of the students, in the case that concerns us we refer to the teaching of English for specific purposes in the tourism industry. Grammar received an eminently vehicular role, being taken as a means to an end. However, it is important to determine when it should be considered an end in itself.
Introduction
In the light of the communicative approach, previous approaches to language teaching did not contemplate an adequate use of meaning in terms of grammatical structures. Of the two levels of meaning: grammatical use (usage) and functional use (use), only one of them was taken into account, while the other was ignored (functional use). As for these two levels of meaning (usage and use), HG. Widdowson raises the need for the language teacher to transmit or send the student both levels taking as a premise that the knowledge of a language includes, on the one hand, knowing the significance of sentences as examples of grammatical use (usage), and on the other, the value they acquire as an example of functional use (use).
M. Swan has made it known that this distinction between grammatical use and functional use has little relevance for the teaching of foreign languages since the value of most of the sentences transcends the limits of a language, and that only problems related to this aspect will arise. in specific and very small cases, bearing in mind that different cultures differ in their behavior and these differences are reflected in language.
According to L. Vygotsky: »Success in learning a foreign language is contingent on a certain degree of maturity in the native language. The student can transfer to the new language the meaning system that he already has in his own.
It can be said without fear of being wrong, that regardless of the similarities that may exist between Spanish as a mother tongue and English as a foreign language in the grammatical system, specifically at the syntactic level, students present great difficulties in correctly transposing the form of many structures in the foreign language.
Development
The teaching of grammar takes a new nuance within the communicative approach. Mastery of grammatical structures is no longer seen from the point of view of correct sentences, but from the point of view of their functional use or communicative purpose (use). Linguistic (grammatical) competence ceases to be the center of attention to make way for communicative teaching of the grammatical system depends a lot on it. What does the student need to be able to do in the foreign language? If the student's immediate objective is communication in the workplace with the client to provide an excellent service, formal precision has a marginal value. When expressing ourselves in English in real situations, we cannot build a sentence remembering all the rules of grammar for each of the parts,Because we don't have time to focus on how to put the elements together, what you need to do is remember the patterns.
Grammar is one of the components of language, together with the sound system and vocabulary. The vocabulary is pronounced and used in grammatical constructions, the grammar is expressed through words and the sound system, and all of this is represented by writing.
The problem does not lie in including grammar in foreign language courses or not; but grammar to include, what type of students, when and how. To learn a foreign language, students must know its basic structures. If they use it well, they don't have to describe it. Mastering a structure is easier to learn through speaking, reading, and writing skills than by studying rules and explanations.
At the elementary level the need is not the study of grammar, but well organized oral and written practice, which contain the grammar itself. If students acquire good practice listening, speaking and reading they learn much more about grammar than with specific explanations or analysis.
There is no exact way to approach grammar, therefore the teacher determines how to discuss a grammatical aspect when necessary. Depending on the type of pattern, you can use different techniques.
I- Questions. They can ask one or two questions to position the students, or get their attention. If students make mistakes when they are practicing, it means that they do not know what they are doing
ex
Personal pronouns: Are we talking about a woman or a man?
What pronoun do we use when we talk about Robert from Betty?
Weather:
Are we speaking in the present or in the past?
What ending does the verb have to express past?
Number:
We are referring to the singular or plural in the sentence.
How do you know that this word is singular?
Adjectives:
Where is the adjective in this sentence?
Before or after the name?
Is it singular or plural?
Comparison:
Are we comparing two things or one thing with the rest?
What is the end of the adjective?
II - Explanation: The teacher must explain matters that are easy to infer.
Eg the rules for forming the plural of nouns, how a noun can modify another noun. Brief explanations on the matter will be given to avoid confusion and unnecessary effort. Clarify students when doing the exercise.
III - Rule Induction: If students do not react to patterns such as: indirect speech, conditionals, passive voice, then students require more attention and deeper analysis than simply asking them two questions. The patterns should be written on the board and briefly discussed.
There are two cases where grammar should not be explained briefly or incidentally, one is in adult education and the other is in short reading courses. In the case of adults who study at a higher level, they are more demanding and usually cannot learn a grammatical pattern unless they understand how it works previously. The teacher should keep in mind that when working with adults grammar rules help, but practice comes first, so they should not be omitted or reduced, and of course you as a teacher are an important factor, you need to know grammar and be aware of it.
At the intermediate level, students will face more complex structures and these cannot be learned through repetition because they are too long to be repeated naturally, they occur more frequently in writing than in speech, and very few Situations can be created to be performed orally in real situations, in addition at this time students can make generalizations, associate, transfer and transform with related structures. For example: The conditional sentence. If I have studied hard I will pass the exam If I have studied I would pass the exam, it can be acquired orally helped with a little induction about the correlation of the times.
Once the aforementioned correlation has been acquired, the transformation If you had studied hard he would have passed the exam, will be more learned as a consequence of having learned and being able to use perfect times as a result of oral practice.
Bibliography
- Borg, Simon. Teachers' theories in grammar teaching. In ELT Journal, 53 (3), 1999.Celce-Murcia, Marianne. Making informed decisions about the role of grammar in language teaching. TESOL Newsletter, 1985, pp. 4-5.Celce-Murcia, Marianne. Describing and teaching English Grammar with reference to written discourse. In Functional Approaches to written text: classroom applications. Washington DC: English Language Programs, 1997. Harshbarger, L. What works in the E LT classroom? Using robust reasoning to find out. In English Teaching Forum, 40 (2), 2002. pp.18-26.O'Malley, Michael and Chamot, Anna. Learning strategies in second language acquisition. Australia: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Swan, Michael. A critical look at the communicative approach I. In ELT Journal, v. 39, no. 1, 1985. Rosa Antich de León.English Language Teaching Methodology Thompson, Michael. The TOEFL and grammar. In English Teaching Forum, 39 (3), 2001. pp. 2-9 Vigotsky, Lev. Thought and language. Havana City: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1982.Widdowson, HG Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Wilkins, D. Notional Syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
